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"We’re all dealing with serious concerns ranging from health to money and everything in between. But the one thing we all have in common is life under the coronavirus lockdown.

"This unfamiliar existence can be lonely or claustrophobic or both, depending on your circumstances.

"With adventuring on hold, my world now exists entirely of a small flat with just one short outing each day.

"Adapting to the new circumstances surrounding Covid-19 is essential for both physical health and mental wellbeing."

Here Charlie shares the 5 lessons he has learned to survive life under lockdown...

1. Routine is key

We spend our regular lives trying to avoid boring schedules.

But when outside your comfort zone planned chunks of time help the hours pass painlessly.

Listlessness leads to haplessness. When I walked alone across the Gobi desert I faced weeks with only plodding, eating and sleeping on the agenda.

My only goal was to get from one side of the vast inhospitable region to the other.

However, I built a daily routine as follows: breakfast, walk two hours, snack, walk two hours, lunch, walk two hours, snack, walk two hours, dinner, sleep.

This not only provided me with structure and purpose, but it also gave me things to look forward to spaced evenly throughout the day (meals, of course!)

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Charlie Walker is seen above in the Gobi desert

2. Quiet company is good company

Normally, coming home from work to a flatmate or loved one is a great opportunity to natter about the details of your day.

However, if you’ve spent the entire day getting in each other’s way, trying to work while entertaining the kids, or fuming at the annoying hold music on your travel insurance helpline, there might not be much to catch up on.

When I skied 1,000 miles through Arctic Siberian winter in temperatures down to -40˚C, I was in the company of just one friend and on more than one occasion we went a month without encountering a single other human.

We skied together all day and shared a cramped tent at night.

At first we felt compelled to make small talk but we soon learned that contented quiet is healthy.

The trick to muted harmony was simply to confirm once a day that we hadn’t done anything to upset or offend each other.

Otherwise, all that silence can feel uncomfortable or even hostile.

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Charlie is seen above skiing as the sun shines down on him

3. Learn to love being on your own

It’s a surprisingly fine line between grinding loneliness and blissful solitude.

Many of us long for exactly what we don’t have. In the midst of busy lives in crowded public spaces we often yearn for space and peace.

When I cycled across Tibet in winter I was in the wilderness for six weeks in polar conditions with nobody to talk to and no phone or music player.

Better days are ahead and impatience will only make this feel more drawn out

Charlie Walker

Tibet is among the least populated places on Earth, and I often went many days without uttering a word.

This started out as the loneliest and most upsetting experience of my life, but over time I learned to appreciate the fact that I was the absolute master of my time.

I spent the days happily inside my own head taking stock, assessing my life, and making plans for the future.

I could do whatever I wanted whenever I wanted, and started to appreciate life’s smaller, simpler pleasures.

For example, each morning I lay in my sleeping bag with a book and a coffee for an hour after breakfast.

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Charlie is seen cycling in Tibet

4. Indulge in hobbies

Whether it’s gardening, crafts, learning an instrument or DIY, we all have things we wish we did more of. When I rode a pony across the Mongolian steppe for two months I had long days to fill and there were only so many hours that my small steed could tolerate me in the saddle.

I took up drawing to fill my copious free time.

Each day I completed a couple of five-minute sketches and one longer, more detailed drawing, usually of my horse in the gaping grasslands.

This lockdown is the perfect time to dig out the sketch pad again, once I’ve fixed the shower and ordered a didgeridoo online, that is!

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Charlie is seen on a pony in the Mongolian steppe

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Charlie is seen riding a bicycle across the Congo

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Charlie, seen trekking in Papua New Guinea, said he would walk for ten hours a day, often alone

5. Don’t lose patience

Better days are ahead and impatience will only make this feel more drawn out.

When I was trekking through the Papua New Guinean interior I walked ten hours a day through some of the most inhospitable conditions imaginable.

The equatorial jungle was impossibly dense. Hacking away with my machete, progress was often under five miles a day. It was monsoon season too.

Daily downpours had me regularly slipping on mud and reflexively reaching out to grab branches or vines that were often covered in thorns.

Leeches got into my shoes and so my socks ran red with blood when I wrung them out each evening. After a week of this I reached a river.

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